Birthday Cards

Faye Burlingame* Birthday Cards
Within the studies of early adult hood on it has been shown that adults memory declines in the years to come. Making It difficult to remember certain memories or the little things that once happened. It has also been shown that throughout adult hood, adults do not go through actual milestones or stages such as the younger groups do. Once a person is past their 20’s the mile stones begin to lessen and become less distinct.
In a younger age group such as from birth to 20 years old there tend to be a lot of milestones, like first words, and steps, drivers license, voting at 18 and becoming an adult, college a career. But once you are out of those stages there are not many other major things other than marriage, kids, divorce, and death, the end.
When looking at the birthday cards there are a lot more for the younger age groups, because they are more recognized for every single year. It seems to be more of a big deal to younger kids, and once you get older people wish they didn’t have birthdays. They cards continued up until about 10-12 years of age before they start skipping with specific years. Than they go to 40’s “over the hill” and 60 “holy crap your old” and no one gets cards when they turn 100, that would just be a worthless card company, really how many 100 year old birthday cards would anyone ever need to buy. Card companies just start skipping around the years after they get into the double digits.
Most of the birthday cards are funny (or try to be for that matter) other wise they are very generic in just saying, “Happy Birthday”. The cards try to show that aging is not a bad thing, they try to make humor of it all and lighten the day. There is not much difference in cards, you can get funny or generic. The older people get the less appealing the cards seem to be. They say what needs to be said and that’s about it.
As the readings have said the younger need more appealing, catch eye type things to interested. Older age groups lessen in being able to recall these types of things so it is not such a big deal, I guess people start to grow out of it. As the milestones go, the cards may tend to say something about getting a drivers license, or maybe about finally qualifying for the senior discount at restaurants. Either way the way that the cards are portrayed they do show the differences in them as to aging and how the developmental studies have been somewhat taken into view. They seem to be slacking in the old people department and need to start making them some flashy cards.